Eurycea rathbuni, the Texas blind salamander, is restricted in its distribution to the Balcones Escarpment of Hays County, Texas. It is a subterranean cave-dwelling salamander, coming to the surface only when water flow displaces it. The diet of E. rathbuni consists mainly of invertebrates such as shrimp, snails, and amphipods. Eurycea rathbuni is characterized by a number of features including a large head with a flattened snout, vestigial eyes beneath the skin surface, external gills, elongate limbs, and 12 costal grooves. This species is currently on the federal endangered species list.

Eurycea rathbuni formerly was called Typhlomolge rathbuni. Mitchell and Reddell (1965) proposed the placement of T. rathbuni in Eurycea, a placement supported by the phylogenetic analysis of Chippindale et al. (2000). Hillis et al. (2001) proposed that the name Typhlomolge be retained for the lineage consisting of the last common ancestor of E. rathbuni, E. robusta, and E. waterlooensis, and all of its descendants.

About the Species

This specimen (TNHC 51176), collected by D. M. Hillis and P. Chippindin in Hays Co., Texas, was made available to the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility for scanning by Dr. Timothy Rowe of the Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. Funding for scanning was provided by a National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative grant to Dr. Rowe.

The specimen was scanned by Matthew Colbert on 27 January 2004 along the coronal axis for a total of 510 1024x1024 pixel slices. Each slice is 0.0395 mm thick, with an interslice spacing of 0.0395 mm and a field of reconstruction of 16 mm.